For those of you who use Raspberry Pi’s in your home environment, I’m curious as to what you use them for. What applications are you running on them? Do you have your Pi’s setup in a cluster?
I own a raspberry pi 4. Every time I try to use it, I spend half my time trying to fix the stuttery/non responsive UI by fucking with the compistor and such. And then I give up.
I eventually got a new gaming PC and turned my old one into a Linux server, and haven't really touched my Raspberry Pi since.
Yes, I'm using a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB. I'm using the Argon Eon case and it serves my needs well. The speeds are slow however, so keep that in mind
It can run a surprisingly large amount of services. I'm running:
OpenMediaVault (the running OS, based on Debian)
Portainer (easy management of installing services through Docker)
SWAG (proxy manager, where I link IP:PORT to each DNS. Automatic Let's Encrypt too)
Vaultwarden
Immich (ML and typesense enabled)
Jellyfin
Joplin Server
Gitea
Audiobookshelf
PaperlessNGX
Restic + Resticprofile (backups!!!)
There's still 2GB of RAM left, so I'm looking to self host Firefly III
On another Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 4GB, I'm hosting Home Assistant
ssh client so I can port forward through the vpn server to/from connected clients
jellyfin
ntfy (self hosted notifications)
pi-hole (vital for the local dns)
nginx
gitea
wallabag
minecraft server
container registery
smb share for my friend (I help them with content creation)
smb share for a live recording profile I set up on android
Those are just docker containers, it also is a backup server for all the devices I own. It also runs all non sensitive data on an unencrypted partition then will auto decrypt the sensitive partion through ssh via my desktop. This means my vpn server will always run so I can connect, wake on lan my desktop, decrypt it and log in. Im sure I'm missing things.
I have one pi (rpi 4b) that I still use. I have it in an Argon One V2 case for the daughter board that lets me boot from an M.2 SATA SSD. I got tired of the corrupted SD cards. It’s actually reliable now.
Anyway, I mainly only use it because in the event of a power outage, as soon as power is restored, it automatically turns on. If I’m not home, I can SSH back into my network and send a WoL packet to my actual server to turn it back on.
The pi also runs:
Scrypted so I can view my ring cameras in the Apple Home app and so I get the “someone is at the door” notifications on my Apple TV
I feel old, I don't understand 90% of words in this thread lol.
I just have kodi on Libreelec with a jellyfin plugin on my rpi4 and even that struggled with overheating at times. So I run most stuff on my pc instead. I'm tempted to try the portainer to get some experience with docker tho.
Cluster of Pi4 8GBs. Bought pre-pandemic; love the little things.
Nomad, Consul, Gluster, w/ TrueNas-backed NFS for the big files.
They do all sorts of nifty things for us including Nightscout, LanguageTool OSS, monitoring for ubiquiti, Nextdrive, Grafana (which I use for home monitoring - temps/humidity with alerts), Prometheus & Mimir, Postgres, Codeserver.
Basically I use them to schedule dockerized services I want to run or am interested in playing with/learning.
Also I use Rapsberry Pi zero 2 w’s with Shairport-sync (https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync ) as Airplay 2 streaming bridges for audio equipment that isn’t networked or doesn’t support AirPlay 2.
I’m not sure I’d buy a Pi4 today; but they’ve been great so far.
I made a python soft that uses the pi camera and scans qr codes, and plays the playlist that's on the eventual qr code. Just show the album and it plays.
But they have become so incredible expensive, and banana pis etc just doesn't work that well, so I just stopped the whole Raspberry Pi craze.
Today I just collected a 55€ Lenovo thinkcenter (like 18cm squared x 3.5cm) with a quad core, 8GB/256GB. I think it will replace my next rpi quite well and when it breaks, I can get another one quite simply.
If I want to do more to the metal electronics stuff, I'll just use a 2560 Mega or an esp8266 or similar.
I used to run pretty much all my workloads on Raspberry Pis, mostly in docker containers. I've since moved over to some ex enterprise servers and Proxmox, so I really only have a couple of Pis left in service, running:
Frigate: nvr for my IP cameras
exim: mail relay server for my stuff to be able to email out (nothing in)
Wireguard: outbound VPN server connected to Mullvad
Pi-hole: 2nd instance for redundancy, also runs cloudflared (for DNSoHTTP) and pihole-exporter (for putting Pi-hole stats into Prometheus)
I use it as a media remote for my computer via infrared. IR sensor sends analog data to an arduino which converts it to digital and sends it to a raspberry pi which then invokes commands to control media on my computer by invoking rest apis on a “unified remote” server running on the computer.
I used to run everything with Pis, but then got a x86 USFF to improve Nextcloud performance.
With the energy price madness last year in Europe, I moved most things to cloud VPSs.
One Pi is still running Home Assistant, hooked to my heating/ventilation unit via RS485/modbus.
I had a ZFS backup server with 2 HDDs hooked up over USB to a Pi 8GB. That is just way too unreliable for anything serious, I think I now have a lot of corrupted files in the backups. Looking into getting some Synology unit for that.
For anything serious that requires file storage, I'd steer clear from USB or SD cards. After getting used to SATA performance, it's hard to go back anyways. I'd really like to use the Pis, but family photo backups turning gray due to bitflips is unacceptable.
They are a great entrypoint to self-hosting and the Linux world though!
RP4 running Home Assistant. Running HA in a docker container is harder than running it as the OS on a Pi4. Running HA is how I get into this, i kept trying to put more crap into HA as addons before realizing i should set up a proper server.
I assembled a handful of temp/humidity sensors (that are actually running on Wemos D1 minis).
Not much love here for the Pi Zero W. I love them for being so flipping cute. I have a couple I use when I am learning a new system admin tool or service and I need to be able to let it run undisturbed to observe stability and function.
Lately I am learning MQTT so am using one as a broker to manage some homemade smart devices.
If I can ever find one in stock, i want a couple of Zero 2 for similar projects that would benefit from the extra oomph.
I'm new to the party and am still experimenting, not super tech savvy but I've been doing a few things.
I have one SD set up for retro gaming via Lakka. Wish Lakka had an option to add a desktop like RetroPie but just really love the interface and ease of use. Tried recalbox and it's nice as well! Can't remember why I settled for Lakka.
Another SD is for experimenting at the moment. As mentioned I'm brand new to the pi community so I've installed Raspbian on it and have just been testing the waters. Set up iirc my first VNC network between it, my PC and my phone. Also have been using it to rip and burn DVDs via brasero. Don't have wifi at home, I use a hotspot which complicates using my printer wirelessly so I'm considering using the pi as a network for that. There's also a cool program I found where you learn musical coding? It's pretty interesting though I still don't really know what it's for haha.
I'd really like to do more with it but as mentioned am just learning. Hell, I just got it running a few weeks ago after it had been down for a couple years so I'm sure I l'll be doing more when I find the time.
I'd love to set it up in my vehicle and have Spotify, gps navigation, retro gaming etc through it but seems like a big project with my limited understanding ATM.
Have a pi4 8gb and every time I need it for some mini graphics project, the GPU lags no matter how much vram I give it, so I usually end up using some old laptop with a GPU and the pi goes back to random things like data collection with sensors or some funny breadboard projects.
Also use it to evaluate lightweight linux distros.
Currently on my Pi4 I'm running Home Assistant for home automation, Semaphore for nightly runs of my Ansible playbooks, and Wireguard for VPNing into my local network. I've moved from PiHole to AdGuard running on my router, as it's far fewer moving parts.
On my Pi Zero I'm running Pi-Star for my amateur radio needs.
I have 2 Pi 4s in operation. One is a Moonlight/USBoverIP stream gaming portal. It automatically turns on and connects to a VM running Sunshine on my Proxmox host, passes any USB controllers/bluetooth etc to the VM so the big loud gaming box is in the basement and the tiny Pi is next to the TV. 1080p60 works great, minimal lag.
The other acts mostly as a quorum server for the proxmox servers, I have two proxmox hosts and use the second Pi to ensure the cluster doesn’t get split brain. It also acts as a USBoverIP host for my home automation Zigbee and Zwave usb sticks, so that either proxmox host can connect to the USB sticks and the home automation VMs aren’t locked to a physical host.
Using Pi's to run services in my homelab which I want to keep separate from my server (to have some sort of failover in case the server goes down). Status/Monitoring, VPN server and so on
One 3B+ runs my network services - things I need to stay up if I restart the production server. Another one has a specialist role - IP gateway into the ham radio AllstarLink network - connected to a 70cm radio with a modified USB sound dongle.
I have a pi 3 running my primary instance of Adguard Home, a pi 4 I don't know yet what to do with, and a Pi B that has RISCOS on it for fun. Seriously, if you ever just want to poke around a unique OS, download the official RISCOS image in the Raspberry Pi imager. Any UK folks reading this know what I'm talking about. But as an American I'd never heard of it and it's just friggin' neat!
I run a Pi Zero W over wifi as my backup pi-hole so that clients can still connect if my main system is updating or down. Planning to get a more powerful one for OctoPrint.
One of the active ones runs a MediaWiki engine (if it detects my home wifi on startup, it acts as a mirror slave to the master installation on the server, if not, it opens a wifi with my home wifi's credentials and offers the wiki as read-only).
Another one runs a DB that controls a number of ESP8266 clients controlling lights, motors, and sensors.
Open Media Vault on a pi setup with external hard drive. Mainly for Samba Shares, and added the DAAP server. And since it comes with portainer I used that to setup HomeAssistant, Syncthing, CUPS, kanboard, whoogle, and Trilium Notes.
Amazing little piece of tech.
Dakboard above the fridge shows calendar and shared photo album. It also runs bluetooth and serves as a relay for Homeassitant and a few kitchen devices (ie: igrill mini probe for meat).
pikvm for a desktop
pikvm+ kvm for lab rack esxi servers.
the latter two also run tailscale and allow me to SSH proxy if needed as a back VPN/remote access utility.
There is also a 4th. It runs NUT/UPS tools for their network gear and a mail relay for alerting and also tailscale so I can proxy if necessary.
Since its tailscale etc. Only key based auth is allowed on these boxes.
I'm using my RPi4 4gb to run a home media server, jellyfin and *arr stack all containerized and automated. Also syncthing for obsidian. Works perfectly
I'm using a pi4 8gb as my server, with a pi4 2gb as backup in case the first one dies. It's a very classic server, running postfix/courier-imap for mails, lighttpd for web, bind9 for dns, ergo for irc, sqlite3 for databases. I also use fail2ban for IDS and cron to run tons of various task. All of that is hosted on a Gentoo linux OS.
The one thing I don't want to use is docker. I love docker for development or for deploying the main app at work, but it makes managing updates a nightmare for handling multiple services on my server (most your containers probably contain vulnerable software due to lack of system updates), and it eats resources needlessly. Then again, it's made possible because I avoid the big webapps that usually need it.
Ones dedicated to being an openvpn host for my phone to be permanently connected to (pi4), and a second runs pihole + nginx as a reverse proxy into the rest of my http(s) services (pi3b+). The vpn keeps my phone behind pihole when mobile + gives access to lan only services.
The proxy being separate lets me take any of the other machines offline and the proxy will serve a 'service unavailable'/'maintenance' page instead of just timing out the connection. It serves 2-3 8mbps video streams regularly without issue.
I run a Pi4B 8GB as a home server for Plex, Nextcloud, and Torrenting. Works fine for up to 1080p x264 stuff but I might grab a Pi5 or alternative when it launches because I'd like to start storing x265 stuff too. I even opened it up to a few family members outside the household too and we barely notice the extra load
It's connected to my 3d printer and runs octoprint allowing me to upload print jobs. and control the printer from my home network.
It serves up the Pi camera video stream.
It can also switch the printers light on and off.
One Pi Zero 2W runs NodeRed to control a few lights in the house.
Another used to run Octoprint until it recently stopped responding. I haven't gotten around to troubleshooting it yet.
I bought a pi0 when I first started hosting things. It ran a pihole and piVPN instance for about 3-4 years before it died.
I would love to have another one, they are great pieces of hardware.. but are just scalped to hell. I'll keep buying old desktops and laptops with higher specs for cheaper until the costs go down.
I used to have a self-built, locally-hosted power strip with individual outlet control that served it's own interface. It was powered by a Model B+. I've since moved to home-assistant and zigbee plugs since my self-built solution was pretty bulky, but it was by far my longest lived Pi project.
I have a single Raspberry Pi 3b as a local file/media server running Jellyfin. I'm also running BOINC and seeding torrents of various Linux distributions. External HDD for storage, plus a thumb drive for the local media and another for the torrents so it only has to spin up when someone's actually using it.
It's not super-fast by any means, but it's fast enough to listen to music over my LAN, which is the main thing I need it to do quickly. Though eventually I plan on setting up a better NAS on something with faster I/O.
I have a water container I need to take care of in my house. An ultrasonic sensor hooked to my raspberry 3b uploads the collected data to my vps that later serves an html through Flask to show the water level. It has a few alarms so that I can take action at the appropriate time.
The ultrasonic sensors HC-SR04 suck and I have to replace them quite frequently. Other then that it works really well.
I have been for about a year with one 8gb Pi 4 with a 500gb ssd. I bought it as a way to dip my toes into self hosting. Started with Home Assistant OS, but now I have a bunch of containers set up, such as Home Assistant, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, qbittorrent, and a few others. I will eventually get something a little beefier to host my media, but will absolutely keep the Pi running.
I have a couple of Pis, but currently only using the Pi 4 which is my Kodi box (LibreELEC). I planned to use my older Pi 3B as a web server, but I also have Proxmox on a NUC running as my main home server, so I don't know if there's any advantage to using the Pi at this point.
I only have one that's hooked up to my 3D printer for Octoprint. I'd like to set up another one as a SDR, but I leave my app hosting to more powerful machines.
I have a Pi 3 running Home Assistant. I also have two Pi Zeros that I have MP4 Museum installed.
I use MP4 Museum to run projected Halloween decorations mostly but it's great to have a little box that will take a video file from a thumbdrive and dump it out the HDMI port on boot.
I use a Pi4 to run one of my HAproxy nodes. It does die once in a while from not enough power because my power brick is pretty old at this point. Other than that its great. I used to have a cluster of Pi3's bit I'm transitioning cluster managment systems so they aren't doing anything right now. I recently got a Lichee pi and that will most likely replace them once I get it all working.
Using a Pi3b to run AdGuard Home and a TailScale subnet router.
I've got another Pi3b running Octoprint/Klipper for a 3d printer, but I'm currently migrating that to Mainsail running on an old SFF PC so I can run multiple printers with Klipper off the same PC.
The rest of my stack is on an actual server running UnRaid with like 50tb raw storage.
I will say that TailScale has been annoying asf with their subnet router setup not actually forcing the correct DNS for AdGuard Home so I can have ad-blocking while away from home. I had to move back to a pure Wireguard setup directly on my router for DNS to work properly.
use it for home assistant. I'm astonished because my test install from years ago on a pi that's around 7 years old is going with no intervention aside from updates. it's crazy robust.
for a while my laptop was slow and I needed a test local environment rebuilding with webpack so I set up a newer pi that ran the Dev servers so my laptop didn't choke. I've got a better laptop now.
One for home assistant, one for very basic network services (dns, auth, dhcp) that I want up all the time even if I have to shut down the router+firewall. If I have to upgrade the firewall box I don't want to be unable to print, or use smart home stuff.
I have a 2 running teamspeak for gaming with my wife (separate rooms and don't want to yell) and pihole. And a 3 hooked to a 3d printer running octoprint.
Mostly as kodi/plex front ends. I've set them up as a kubernetes cluster in the past but they didn't have enough ram to run my torrent client. Now I just use an old Thinkpad running talos.
I have one set up as an irrigation controller. I was going to build an OpenStack cluster to test configuration settings on (I run a production cluster at work), but gave up when the supply chain problems happened and prices skyrocketed.
I have a pi zero running as a doorbell camera, alongside a couple more CCTV cameras, and a pi4 running in kiosk mode connected to my motioneye server displaying said camera streams on a crappy old TV in my home office.
I run AdGuard Home (mostly for malware domain blocking and DNS caching) on my home server, and the Pi acts as a secondary DNS server. I use AdGuardHome-Sync to keep the config in sync across the two.
I've got several for random little tasks that crop up, but main use is for the conbee II I have running the zigbee network for all the smart lights. I've got a UPS hat using some old 26650 cells for battery backup, mostly so that if power cuts off I don't run into any issues with the setup and the rare cases where I have to take the power off the server rack for whatever reason. RPi has actually been rock solid for couple years now so no issues with that side, wife approval factor has likewise been high
Also got a Turing Pi but haven't had a change to play with it too much yet. For most everything else I'm running a docker and VMs in TrueNAS, but would probably change that setup at some point..
I used a pi 3 to host a Foundry server (TTRPG software).
I use Docker to simplify things, since I run two instances of it. Simple port forwarding setup within the docker container. the main reason I used a pi instead of my computer is so my players could access their dnd stuff all the time.
I stopped because I switched ISPs and they won't let me port-forward. My vpn supports it but the latency isn't ideal. I host the same thing through a cheap server now.
I have four Pis. They're running Pihole DNS & DHCP, a reverse proxy, and torrent clients. I don't have them setup as a cluster, been meaning to look into it but I don't want to add complexity so I'm putting it off.
Stopped using my RPi4 ever since Docker broke for some reason and I didn't have the patience to reinstall and set the containers up again and risk it happen again. So I'm using the cloud for now.